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DIALOGUE AS A MULTILEVEL CONCEPTUAL SPACE
Natalia KRAVCHENKO
4Abstract
The paper explores the conceptual background of dialogue viewed as a compound conceptual space associated with the participants’ cognitive contexts as the main sources of its intertextuality. The groups of conversational concepts have been identified, including categorical identity concepts, operative identity concepts, interactive concepts, concepts-ideas, a genre concept, and social-semiotic concepts. The types of cognitive contexts “supplying” the concepts to the dialogue’s conceptual space have been established. The article also investigates the regular correspondences between the dialogue’s formal and pragmatic properties and its conceptual structure.
Keywords: dialogue; conceptual space; cognitive contexts; concepts; intertextuality.
Introduction
Studying dialogue as a compound conceptual space connected with the communicants’ cognitive contexts requires a new research perspective focused on the cognitive-conceptual motivation of the dialogue’s pragmatic, formal and content structures. The dialogue’s conceptual model elaborated in our research integrates M. Bakhtin’s theory of heteroglossia and dialogicality of human cognition [21] with semiotic conception of Moscow-Tartu school [23], cognitive theory of discourse by T.A. Van Dijk [18], H. Sacks’ Membership Categorization Analysis [9; 10] and Positioning Theory [4; 17; 19] as a part of modern Narrative Analysis. Despite their different origins and substantial differences in research objectives, materials and methods, these theories construct the methodological background for the conceptual study of “otherness” circulation (M. Bakhtin) in the dialogical discourse; they study various cognitive contexts of a dialogue as the key aspects of its intertextuality.
The principal research subject of the article consists in revealing the main concepts “imported” to the dialogue’s conceptual space from its cognitive contexts “providing” the dialogue’s comprehensive intertextuality. The research also aims at investigating the regular correspondences between the dialogue’s formal and pragmatic properties and its conceptual structure.
In order to reveal such properties we have analyzed a dialogic extract from the novel “Herzog” by Saul Bellow5.
А1. «Well, then, are you coming or not? Why are you so hard to pin down?» B1. «I shouldn’t go out – I have a lot to do – letters to write».
4 Doctor of Science (Philology), Professor, Kiev National Linguistic University, Kiev, Ukraine, [email protected]
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А2. «What letters! You’re such a mystery man. What are these important letters? Business? Perhaps you should discuss it with me, if it’s business. Or a lawyer, if you don’t trust me….». «Or perhaps you don’t eat when you’re alone.»
B 2. «Of course I do».
А3. «Well, then?»
B 3. «Okay», said Herzog. «Expect me soon…».
1. Categorical identity concepts
In accordance with the theory of the language personality and conscience [1; 2; 20; 23] we view the dialogue participants’ identities as the parametrical cognitive structures composed of individual: concepts immanent to the extravert, aggressive, accentuated, rational, rigid, etc. psychological types, and group components, i.e. the concepts of gender, ethnicity, occupation, age, family / property / professional status, ideological affiliation, etc. Individual and group concepts determine identity self-identification and, therefore, the relatively regular and invariant patterns of participants’ communicative behavior. In view of the concepts’ significance for the identity self-identification, self-representation and categorization by others, we propose the term “categorical identity concepts”.
The communicative behavior of A actuates the concepts of "control", "planning", "determination", "rationality," "dominance” revealing a psychological dominant of this participant.
Considering formal conversational structure from conversational analysis perspective [7-12], these concepts are manifested by:
(a) conversational relevance of all A’s moves (with except for the 7th replica in A2 Move);
(b) side sequences used by A to highlight the unclear item (A3, A4),
(c) summation formulae, e.g. a pre-closing structure (A1) to achieve certainty and specification from the interlocutor.
A’s psychological dominant is confirmed at the pragmatic level6 . Categorical identity concepts
determine A’smanipulative strategies to influence the interlocutor’s communicative behavior and make him perform the desired action. Manipulation implies a set of pragmatic means, i.e.:
(a) A combination of positive politeness means (flattery “You’re such a mystery man”) and negative politeness strategies (indirect speech acts, hedging “perhaps”, mitigation “if you don’t trust me”) with face threatening acts: directive speech acts in Move A2 and direct questions in Moves
A1-A3, including those which contain negative assessment of the B’sbehavior (Move A1) andput
pressure on him to perform a certain act (Move A3);
(b) flouting Maxim of Relevancy in 7th replica of Move A2 in order to switch the conversation to a
‘safer’ topic; flouting the Maxim of Quantity: A is too laconic in Move A3 not giving B time to
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come up with another excuse; at the same time A is too eloquent in Move A2 attempting to create a “common ground” with B and elucidate true reasons of his refusal;
(c) the strategy of positive self-representation implemented by pragmatic moves of Apparent Empathy (Move A2: “Perhaps you should discuss it with me”), as well as by hedging, indirect acts, and other impression management means.
Therefore, concepts of “manipulation”, “control”, “planning”, “determination”, “rationality” revealed by formal-conversational and pragmatic features of the A’s language may define A as the rational personality type. Besides, A’s speech marks her professional status (business affiliation) and “female” type of communication (manipulative strategy and genres of instructive discourse), with some “masculine” characteristics, i.e.: A takes communicative initiative, prompts B to continue the conversation (“Well, then”), asks direct, i.e. “face threatening” questions, etc.
B’s moves realize the communicative potential of the concepts of “unpredictability”, “complexity”, “paradox”, “uncertainty”, “ambiguity”, indicating B as an irrational personality type. At the level of formal conversational structure B’s moves are irrelevant (Move B1), incorporate non-preferred pauses (Move B1) and are inconsistent: refusal in Move B1 and agreement in Move B3 are not logically related since they are not supported by intermediate part of the dialogue.
At the pragmatic level, B reveals his irrational identity by flouting the Maxims of Manner (he is obscure in Move B1) and Quantity (in his moves he does not react to A’s reproach and advice and therefore is not as informative as it is required by the interlocutor).
B regularly applies the negative politeness strategies, i.e. the strategies of retreating, being conventionally indirect (Move B1), neither sharing A’s wishes, nor seeking agreement or asserting the common ground (all B’s Moves).
The participants, as evidenced by their speech moves, mutually recognize their categorical identity concepts. B is aware of A’s rational determination to dominate him and control his behavior. B denies his distribution by A in an identity category of “someone who needs help or advice” ignoring this line of conversation. Consequently, B’s indirect, obscure, insufficiently informative moves are caused by his unwillingness to be governed by A. On the other hand, A is aware of B’s irrationality and tries to clarify his answers. The line of B from A’s perspective is the story of a person who does not know what he wants and needs control for his own sake.
Accordingly, the first aspect of the dialogue’s intertextuality consists of its relationships with an identity cognitive context determining the participants’ self and others’ identification with a certain psychological type or a social group including corresponding patterns of communicative behavior / categorical roles.
2. Operative identity concepts
Operative identity concepts have compound genesis. They derive:
(a) from categorical concepts (generalizing the immanent personality characteristics);
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(c) from participants’ previous dialogic practices and meeting the socio-communicative expectations of others (distribution into identity categories with conventional communicative actions, common role pairs and agreed communicative scenarios, i.e. of “lovers”, “friends”, “relatives”, “colleagues”, etc.).
All operative identity concepts are relevant for the positional roles performance.
2.1. Operative concepts derivative from categorical concepts.
The first group of operative identity concepts can be seen as an implementation of the categorical concepts of “Rational / Irrational” type. The concept of “rational” integrates the variables: “self-confident” (all A's Moves), “a reasonable adviser” and “a mentor” (“Perhaps you should discuss it with me, if it’s business. Or a lawyer, if you don’t trust me”).
Besides, A’s rationality is revealed by her identity’s disguising under inappropriate roles for achieving certain goals. These are the roles of “a caring girlfriend” (“Or perhaps you don’t eat when you’re alone”) and “a trusted friend”, marked by means of positive politeness: flattery in move A2 (“You’re such a mystery man”), expressions of sympathy and understanding (move A3) and the use of colloquial idioms (“Why are you so hard to pin down?”) as an in-group marker.
B’s categorical concept of “irrationality” is manifested by operative identity concepts and their corresponding roles of “unexpected” and “evasive” (Moves B1-B3).
2.2.Operative concepts derivative from intertextual macro scenarios.
The second cognitive context of the operative identity concepts is the “donor’s” sphere of intertextual storylines and macro scenarios of the role behavior disclosing the intertextual nature of participants’ moves and role positioning, e.g. sacrifice – selfishness, devotion of women – volatility of men, etc.
Based on the role concepts of macro-cultural narratives the dialogue’s participants play the following positional roles.
1. The line of A from A’s point of view is the story of a woman, able to care and give a hand (A’s positional roles of “caring girlfriend” and “trusted friend”).
2. The line of B from A’s point of view is the story of a person who does not know what he wants and needs control for his own sake (A’s positional roles of “mentor” and “reasonable adviser”). 3. The line of A from the B’s point of view is the story of excessive care and control (B’s positional
roles of “unexpected” and “evasive”).
4. The line of B from B’s point of view is the story of a person who wants others to leave him alone (B’s positional roles of “unexpected” and “evasive”).
2.3. Operative concepts derivative from the socialization dialogic practices of communicants
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are alien to B, who refutes the proposed roles of “someone who needs care”, “someone who needs help/advice”, “someone who explains his actions”.
Therefore, the aspect of the intertextuality manifested by operative identity concepts consists of dialogue’s relationships with the communicative cognitive context as the knowledge of roles and scenarios associated with certain psychological types as well as imported from universal intertextual macro scenarios and/or adopted to the patterns of previous dialogic practices of communicants.
3. Interactive concepts
Interactive concepts construct the participants’ interpersonal conceptual space, based on interactive context as the interlocutors’ mutual awareness of personal information, their belonging to a common group, the level of familiarity and social distance. Relationship assessment involves the archetypal conceptual opposition “own-alien” as a universal principle of the relations’ conceptualization. Based on the above said notion of dichotomy we identified three types of interactive concepts, i.e. two basic types and one mixed: (a) uniting concepts (“we are like-minded people”, “we are true men”, “we are caring mothers / well-off women”, etc.);
(b) separating concepts (“I – You / They”, “familiar – stranger”, “friend – foe”); (c) uniting-separating concepts (“I am like you, but we are not like others”).
In the dialogue above we can find two basic types of interactive concepts primarily introduced by A’s speech. Separating concept of “otherness” is verbalized by moves A1 (lexically, pointing to B’s separating actions: “Why are you so hard to pin down?») and A2 (referring to the mystery of B’s personality) as well as by competitive style of A’s communicative behavior, the desire to dominate the partner.
Separating concept of “otherness” is a part of A’s manipulative behavior since the dialogue’s confronting strategy aims to highlight and eliminate the cause of confrontation then seen as subordinate to cooperative strategy.
Uniting concept of sameness (“we have a lot in common”) as a cognitive base of the cooperative strategy is manifested by pragmatic moves of A’s Apparent Empathy and by positive politeness means including flattery and in-group markers to create the participants’ common ground.
4. Concepts-ideas
Concepts-ideas of the dialogue can either match the value, identity and interactive concepts or be the conceptual manifestation of referent situation based on local situational and textual context in their projection on the participants’ situational models. Consequently, communicants may produce similar or different concepts-ideas, which depend on similarity or difference of their situation models, world pictures and perceptions of each other.
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imposes her concept-idea by direct and indirect speech acts, manipulative strategies and techniques and other formal and pragmatic means studied in above subparagraphs 1-4.
For B the dialogue’ referent is the A-B relationships threatening his freedom and personal autonomy. B realizes that if he designates “his” referent by textual means, it will result in a communicative misunderstanding and a conflict. Therefore, B does not reveal his situational model neither by logical nor associative co-referent means, and his moves seem non-preferred and indirect, deviating from cooperative maxims.
5. Social-semiotic concepts
A social-semiotic concept is the key value of the dialogue revealing its intertextuality with a dominant institutional (“power”, “education”, “law”) or everyday (“common sense”) life ideology. It is recognized by a stereotypical (defined by dominant discourses or consumer ideology of “common sense”, etc.) means of assessment, conceptual metaphors, topoi, etc. which are metonymically associated with certain agents, institutions, situations, events and communicative scenarios restricting discourse creation and interpretation to socially / institutionally sanctioned patterns. Thus, A’s rationality is manifested in the dialogue as a type of common sense ideology based on topoi of “fundamental values”, while B’s moves are based on topoi of “independence”, “individuality”, “personality”, “dissimilarity”, marking individualistic discourse.
6. Genre concept
Genre concept or concept-scenario is a generalized representation of a discourse type: instruction, gossip, complaint, etc., structured by information about a genre thematic component, its verbal parameters, typical participants with their stereotypical scenarios, roles, relationships, goals and strategies; a cognitive structure of a genre concept is similar to the notion of contextual model by Van Dijk [18].
An extract above makes a hybrid genre of the instructive discourse incorporating the features of Advice and Reproach with typical communicative scenarios and their corresponding roles constitutive for these genre models. Both concept-scenarios are initiated by A’s moves: the genre of Reproach is implicated by a second part of Move A1 and Advice is explicated by Move A2. The most distinctive feature of the exchange structure is mismatch of B3’s Moves to the roles presupposed by these genres’ scenarios.
The reproach normally predicates the second role part of justification, agreement or refutation while an appropriate second part to a move-advice is the role of agreement / disagreement or gratitude. However B’s moves are evasive, topically incoherent (Move B1) as well as too laconic and contextualized with additional peripheral topic which deviates from the genre concept-scenario (Move B2).
Conclusion
We revealed cognitive contexts of the dialogue as the main sources of its intertextuality, which “supply” concepts for the dialogic conceptual space:
(1) identity cognitive context constructed by participants’ ideas about selves and others as psychological types and group members (categorical identity concepts);
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adopted to the patterns of previous dialogic practices of communicants (operative identity concepts);
(3) interactive context as the interlocutors’ knowledge of personal information about each other, their belonging to the common group, the level of familiarity and social distance as well as other information assessed according to the archetypic dichotomy of “own-alien” (interactive concepts);
(4) frames of the dominant ideological, social and institutional contexts as well as a consumer “common sense” ideology (social-semiotic concepts);
(5) local situational and textual context versus the participants’ situational models (concepts-ideas); (6) genre prototypes pertained to a particular communicative culture.
The concepts’ congruency and, vice versa, their incompatibility determine the types of cooperative, conflicting or competitive interaction. In the dialogue above the conceptual mismatch is revealed by opposed identity concepts (both categorical and operative) as well as by different concepts-ideas and social-semiotic values which result in separating interactive concepts and in genre concept’s transformation caused by non-acceptance of conceptually based scenarios and roles.Therefore, the conceptual space of the above dialogue manifests an implicit conflict interaction.
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